We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones. -- Stephen King in Danse Macabre

The online Dark Fiction/Horror Writers workshop started in 1994 on AOL. For many years it was the only free online workshop for horror writers. For nearly six years, Michele Patterson ran it with Paula Guran. Patterson then took over administering the group alone. It no longer exists, but the idea of helping beginning writers -- especially horror writers -- has always been part of DarkEcho. In the place of the workshop, we now offer some articles we hope will prove useful.

The following articles were originally published in DarkEcho or Writers.com, a newsletter for Writers on the Net. Some are definitely tilted toward horror writers, others are not. If you are interested in horror writing, you might also read So You Want To Be a Horror Writer? in the Features section.